<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>radio nowhere by mel_lifluously</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25796260">radio nowhere</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mel_lifluously/pseuds/mel_lifluously'>mel_lifluously</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>AU Central [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role, The Last of Us</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe: The Last of Us, Character Study, Gen, a sort of hopeful fairy tale in a dark dark place, sickness and healing and kindness, soft sad post apocalypse vibes, the clays are a band of medics trying their best to heal what they can</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:46:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>517</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25796260</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mel_lifluously/pseuds/mel_lifluously</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the early days after it all went wrong, the Clays did what they’ve always done.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>AU Central [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2073990</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>radio nowhere</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I listened to Ashley Johnson and Brian W. Foster's cover of this beautiful song and I had Feelings. This is definitely going to be on the sadder side of things, but above all else it's hopeful. This is a gentler apocalypse story - people taking care of each other with the resources they have and doing the best they can in bad situations.<br/>Stay safe out there.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the early days after it all went wrong, the Clays did what they’ve always done. They always were a steady sort. And there’s little that needed to be changed in their case, really. The Blooming Grove was a private place, tucked away amid the looming cedars, the tangle of undergrowth, cut off from the main roads by a wall of thick, unyielding green. The cities so many fled from were nothing more than a distant worry - a back of the mind thought, forgotten in the quiet and the rhythm of the day’s work. Fetch water from the spring, pick flowers from the garden, dry petals on the sun - splashed windowsill, mind the kettle and make sure tomorrow’s bread was rising. Simple and unchanging. Occasionally Calliope and Colton would have to venture out into the thicket with their hunting knives when the burbling, rattling clicks sounded too close for comfort, but other than that things were fine. They were normal. They were good, even. Blissful in that quiet, selfish, shameful way where you feel like you’re getting away with something. </p>
<p>That was until the first survivor found them. Clarabelle came across her in the fall, when the leaves were just starting to change and the flowers in the graveyard bristled with frost. She was older - Aunt Corrin’s age, graying dark hair braided back from her face, her patchy flannel rolled up to her knobby elbows. Her eyes were clouded with fever, ringed in dark hollows, and her skin was tinged blue. </p>
<p>The Clay siblings were raised on their aunt’s medical journal anecdotes the same way pre - outbreak kids grew up with fairytales. Even baby Belle knew what cholera looked like: the hollow eyes, the exhaustion, the shivery weakness and shriveled, bluish skin. And with just as much steady certainty she did what the Clays have always done: tied up her hair, washed her hands and set to work. She called her siblings for help, guided the survivor inside, measured out boiled spring water and scavenged electrolyte salts and the precious few antibiotics they could spare. And the survivor - “Anisa,” she rasped, the night her fever broke. Anisa recovered. She healed. The color returned bit by bit to her face, her eyes brightened, and as the winter chill set in she was strong enough to head back down the forest track back to her settlement, a beautifully carved wooden bow laid out where she used to sit. </p>
<p> Anisa was the first to visit the grove, but she was far from the last. Word spread from settlement to settlement of the kindness of the forest people, the healers who spared the dying, tended the suffering and brought the hopeless back from the brink. </p>
<p>The Blooming Grove sits empty now, the cottage long since abandoned and claimed by the blighted wilderness. The outer walls are draped with creeping vines, the halls are filled with fungus spores and the flowers of the graveyard have been overtaken by weeds. But the kindness of the place and its people lives on even still in its quiet, humble way, just as it always has. </p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>